Nine Tenths
by chrissie0707
Summary: Sometime between Born Under A Bad Sign and Jus In Bello, the Winchesters had to make the anti-possession charms a little more permanent. Early S3. Strong language and violence. Dean's about as pale as he's ever been, silent and shaking. Clearly in shock, with blood everywhere. Some of it is his. Most of it is not.


_Author Note: A darker piece, especially for me. This one is for CornishGirl, who wanted to see Dean lose the anti-possession charm Bobby gave them in BUABS and get possessed, before the guys get their tattoos. Nova42 might have blown some pixie dust over this, too._

* * *

 ** _Nine-Tenths_**

" _Smart. How long you had those?"_

" _Not long enough."_

 _\- Jus in Bello_

 _Sixteen Hours Back_

Sam's eyes snap open with sudden awareness and focus. It's a talent he's rediscovered and a sensation he's grown fairly familiar with since returning to a life of hunting. Best to know where everything in the room is and should be as quickly as possible. Best to know exactly what's out of place and have an immediate plan for remedying that situation should it be necessary.

Two things are apparent right off the bat: the bed next to his is unoccupied, and there's a thin wash of muted yellow light cutting across the wall just beyond the empty, rumpled sheets and thrown comforter. He lifts up enough to note the bathroom door across the room has been left open only a few inches. Like it had been nudged shut in haste, without quite enough care to ensure it was completely closed. If it had been – if Dean had been in a frame of mind to take the time for that – Sam wouldn't have been woken so easily by the splash and whine of water rushing from the rusty tap on the other side.

He rises quickly and soundlessly from his own bed, realizing much too late that he shouldn't be doing anything soundlessly right now, that he should be ringing a gong and announcing his presence with loud, purposeful steps. He spares enough time to reassure himself the salt lines are all unbroken and to notice that night has turned into day in the world existing on the other side of the thick curtains, then crosses the space to the ajar bathroom door and nudges it further open, cautiously poking his head inside.

In a tee, sweats, and bare feet, Dean is bent carefully over the sink, mindful of the couple of ribs that are definitely bruised and maybe cracked, looking a little thin and a lot vulnerable. The soft gray cotton his shirt is dark with sweat around the collar and armpits, beads of the same dampening the fine hairs at his temples and glistening in the harsh, buzzing bulbs above the mirror. His hands are puffy, lobster-red and no doubt tender, but he holds them steadily under the steaming stream of scalding water, scrubbing and scouring at something there only he can see. Phantom blood wicked around fingernails and embedded in the deep creases of his knuckles, residue from victims of the demon.

 _Not victims of Dean,_ Sam can't help but remind himself when he thinks he might throw up at the thought. _Victims of the demon._ Pulling the strings of its Dean-puppet.

Sam knows the blood his brother is seeing is phantom, because while it had taken nearly an hour to clean the dried crimson stains from Dean's skin, he knows he got it all. He wouldn't have stopped unless he'd gotten it all, revealing bruises and cuts all over, in varying stages of fading or healing, and a gash behind his left ear wide and deep enough to have required stitching if it had been caught in time. As it stands, Dean will be left with at least one physical scar to match all of the ones that aren't so easy to spot.

Dean's had enough unwelcome company lately to last a lifetime, or at least what's left of it, and Sam's heart drops to the floor between his feet, knowing he has to make his presence here known immediately and gently. "Dean."

There's no such thing as gently enough in these circumstances, and Sam HATES that he knows that. Dean spooks exactly as he'd feared, knocking his hands into the side of the porcelain basin as he startles. His ever-present amulet swings against his chest, and the small anti-possession charm clanks metallically against it, where Sam had threaded it to hang in a place it won't so easily go missing again.

Dean balls his flame-red fingers into fists and braces them there on the edge of the shallow sink, blinking wide, wild eyes across the small space. "Sam. Hey." His voice is rough and hoarse, sounding less like himself than he does the demon. The exorcism took a hell of a lot out of both of them. "Thought you were sleeping."

Sam gives a noncommittal shrug and leans in the doorway, carefully keeping his distance because his brother looks not unlike a caged, feral animal, poised to attack. To defend itself. "What about you? You get any sleep?"

"No. Yeah, I don't know." Dean is making an obvious effort not to accidentally trip into eye contact with himself in the mirror over the sink. "I think so?" he finally settles on, forcing a small smile, but his breath is quickening. Despite the manipulation of his lips, his dark eyes scream _back up, Sam. BackupbackupbackupbacktheFUCKup._

He wasn't even really entirely in the room, but Sam understands this need for space and takes an obligatory step back, pulling the bathroom door even further open as he does so. The additional light coming into the small tiled room does nothing positive for Dean's abysmal complexion. White face, raccoon eyes, and all those bruises and scrapes that he will never, EVER admit to remembering how they got there. All of it puts Sam in a precarious, unfamiliar place of physical and emotional triage.

Dean would know what to do if their places were reversed. He DID know what to do. After Meg had possessed Sam for a week, Dean coaxed out stories and memories and emotions, granting his tortured brother the release of _saying_ while taking on for himself the even heavier weight of _knowing._

Sam remembers the feelings and thoughts attached, everything that came in the moments and days after the possession. Guilt and fear and pain without an identifiable source. Blood on your hands that just won't go away, there even when you close your eyes. Horrible things that won't go away when you close your eyes.

It's not something you can sleep or drink away, but there is no two-way street in this brotherhood. There is only Dean the Protector and Sam the Protected. Even now, with Hell looming in the distance and the son of a bitch he's just exorcised from his brother and that means Dean thinks he has to stand his ground and hold his tongue and swallow everything that's happened to him over the past nine days to make sure he doesn't cause SAM some kind of inadvertent, collateral pain.

 _Nine days._ Somehow it feels like it was both a lifetime and yet only mere moments that Dean was missing.

Sam feels the tickle building in his throat that typically precedes his saying something incredibly stupid, but he can't begin to know what else to say and he's too exhausted to halt the words. "You okay?"

A thousand thoughts cross Dean's face in the following silence, each of them stark and readable in this rare, terrifying moment of his brother's complete vulnerability. He's clearly warring between putting a voice to the things he has memory of his body doing, or admitting to just how much he doesn't, and facing the knowledge that those memories are stuck with him forever.

 _Not for forever. Just until Hell._ Where this demon wanted to make sure Dean would be good company. Breaking him down and making him do awful things just for the sheer enjoyment of it. Returning him twisted into a brand new shape. Dean's too strong for that, but Sam's hands still form angry fists at his sides.

In the end, Dean must travel a similar line of thinking. He picks the lesser of two evils, clamps his lips around any answer, and shifts his eyes sluggishly to finally meet their own reflection in the mirror.

* * *

 _The morning of_

"She stole my boots, Sam!" Dean exclaims as he throws open the motel room door, dried leaves from the sidewalk outside blowing and scraping across the threshold.

Sam looks up from his paper and half-shot cup of coffee, momentarily taken aback by the sight of his brother backlit by late morning sunlight, wide-eyed with rumpled hair and wrinkled clothing and, just as his bitching would indicate, no boots. He leans back in his chair, bringing his watch up and trying not to sound too self-righteous. "Wasn't expecting you back so early."

The door slams behind Dean as he stomps, or attempts to stomp, into the room. "My boots, Sam. She stole my frickin' boots!" He throws both arms down toward his shoeless feet in dramatic fashion.

Sam lays the newspaper flat on the table and crosses his arms over his chest. "I kinda feel like I'm coming in on this in the second act, Dean. Walk it back for me."

"That crazy klepto…bitch!"

Sam tilts his head back and raises an eyebrows. "You mean the girl from the bar last night? The one that only caught your attention because she swiped a beer from across the counter?" Now that he's going, Sam can't seem to stop. He figures he's owed this much, considering he'd been forced to make the trek back to the motel on foot, a full two miles on a chilly, drizzly night. "The one you then left with, ditching _me_ for the prospect of instant gratification and no strings attached?"

"Oh, she got strings attached." Dean's hands plant on his hips as he lifts a foot. "The strings attached to the fucking BOOTS she STOLE. What the hell could she be doing with boots six sizes too big for her?"

Sam stands as Dean begins a frustrated pace of the motel room, and he puts up a decent fight against the grin that will steal – _pun_ definitely _intended_ – whatever might be left of his brother's dignity. But there's genuinely so little to be light-hearted about in their lives right now, and so he fails.

"What, Sam?" Dean demands after spotting the smile, definitely not amused. "WHAT?"

"Nothin.' You're just...a lot shorter without shoes."

Dean spins around on his socked feet, swinging a finger at Sam. "If you start laughing, so help me GOD, Sam, I will kick your ass."

A single snort escapes him. "You check your pockets, man? Missing anything else?"

Dean's eyes widen into an expression suddenly so alarmed and young-looking, it doesn't seem to belong on someone who's been through everything he has. He starts patting down his pockets, jacket first, then jeans. "Aw, man," he whines.

"Uh huh?" Sam really is trying not to be so tickled by all of this. Then he thinks about Dean's spare boots, the ratty-ass black ones with the worn soles that he hadn't been able to convince his brother to retire until he'd slipped off the edge of a curb a few months before, landing ungracefully on his ass in the middle of a crowded walkway, drawing all kinds of the attention from strangers that Dean's always eager to avoid at all costs. The remembered image sets him off chuckling again.

"She jacked my lighter, dude," Dean grumbles. "And I know I had some change on me."

 _Quarters for the jukebox._ "First off, any money you had was money you stole from someone else, so, karma. And second, I think it's about time to be a little pickier about your one-night stands." Sam shrugs. "Or, you know, stop having them."

Dean throws a finger at Sam as he grips the knob behind him with his other hand and wrenches the door open. "You are going to go down in history books as the killer of fun, Sam." He stomps back out to the car for the spare boots, leaving Sam to realize that the idiot not only came into the room without shoes but drove all the way back to their motel from his little rendezvous that way, solely for the sake of a dramatic entrance.

Sam shakes his head with a snicker and returns to his cooling cup of coffee, thinking that it might be a good idea to get a second cup brewing for his brother, unless he wants to spend the rest of the day with a remarkably sour son of a bitch.

But this is the last time he will see Dean for more than a week, and the last time he will laugh for a bit longer than that.

* * *

 _Five minutes back_

Most of the furniture in the room is upended, and the cheapest of the pieces are downright demolished. Sam knows they should move, should get in the car and haul ass because it'll be a miracle if no one comes knocking from all of the commotion. But he figures they're owed a miracle, and he doesn't think they could make it as far as the car right now, so he decides to wait it out.

Dean's shivering. Slumped against the wall where he'd dropped when the demon finally, mercifully left kicking and screaming after throwing him around the room like a pinball. Propped up on trembling arms and splayed hands that are leaving bloody smears across the carpet. One of his old black boots lifted and poised to kick Sam if he gets too close. A thousand-yard stare that lets Sam know not to take that too personally.

Sam doesn't know quite what to do with all of this, let alone where to go from here. He's so exhausted, himself that he's barely keeping his feet under him, drawing from the last dregs of whatever adrenaline-fueled energy well he'd never realized he had until this last week. But whatever pitiful excuse for rest or nourishment he's managed over the past nine days, it's a hell of a lot more than Dean's had.

Sam folds Dad's journal closed and sets it aside on the bureau, the tan leather covering molded into a new shape from his desperate, sweaty hold. He releases his death grip on the near-empty flask of holy water and puts that on the surface next to the book. Then he approaches his brother with small, tentative steps.

Dean's about as pale as he's ever been, silent and shaking. Clearly in shock, with blood everywhere. Some of it is his. Most of it is not.

"Hey," Sam tries as he comes to a halt a safe distance away, but his voice isn't there, just an unintended whimpering croak that doesn't have the legs to travel the space between them. He swallows, gives it another go. "Hey, man. Dean."

If Dean hears him, he doesn't show it. Of course, the way he's ticking and twitching about, it'd be difficult for Sam to tell if he was.

He drops into a crouch in front of his nearly unrecognizable brother and reaches out a hesitant hand, but doesn't touch. "Hey."

Dean's head jerks back, smacking dully against the wall. His hand shakily drifts up to the spot and he winces, but his eyes focus on Sam's face, if only for a moment. "Sammy."

"Hey," Sam returns, letting his hand fall to lightly squeeze his brother's knee, like he's comforting a frightened child. "Just you in there?" he asks with a smile so wide it hurts his face, unable to keep the quake from his voice.

Dean exhales slowly, and something rattles suspiciously inside him. Breaking furniture with your body typically leaves a hell of a mark. "Think so. Yeah."

Sam's head bobs, and he releases a breath that feels like fire rushing to exit his lungs. He pats Dean's leg again. "Well, that's something, huh?"

* * *

 _Twelve hours gone_

She's easy enough to spot, for no other reason than Sam knows what he's looking for: a slightly sluttier, very obviously female version of his brother. Or at least of this brand of Dean that's been downward spiraling since being earmarked for Hell, the Dean that's strong and familiar in the trenches but a genuine stranger in a crowd. So she's loud, front and center and clinging to anything with a dick, and well on the way to being completely sloshed, from drinks she's been lifting stealthily when the paying customers' eyes are turned elsewhere.

Sipping from a tiny straw on some kind of mixed drink, she sashays her way over to the bar and Sam shakes his head, impressed by the end result but certainly not her sloppy technique, then beelines for her as she pauses to flirt with the husky, not entirely uninterested bartender.

"Hey, it's Laura, right?" he opens, sliding up next to her with a tense elbow propped on the high bar.

She narrows her eyes as she glances over at him, then grins, because he fits her very staunch criteria. He can't help but notice there's a smear of red lipstick on her teeth. "Lana."

"Okay." Sam's fingers beat a nervous rhythm on the polished bar top. He keeps his voice lowered. "Do you remember me from last night?"

"I don't think so, no."

"How about my brother, you remember him?" Sam throws a hand between his shoulder and chin. "Yea-tall, leather jacket, big mouth?"

"Oh! Yeah, I remember _him_." She snags a blonde curl between two fingers and twirls her hair in a way that might be endearing if it wasn't quite so nauseating.

"Yeah." Sam winces. "Well, he's, uh…" _Do not saying 'missing,' Sam. You don't know that._ "Listen, Laura – "

"Lana."

"Sure. You took some stuff from him, and I need to see it."

"You need to see what?" Lana asks suggestively, turning to put an elbow on the bar and leaning forward. Neither tact nor subtlety seem to be this girl's strong suit.

 _God, Dean, you know sure how to pick 'em._ Not that his brother has the highest of standards, either. Sam sighs with put-upon patience. He wants to shake this girl until stolen goods and any evidence of common sense fall out of her. "The stuff you stole from him. What was it?"

"Relax, dude, it was just his shoes and some money." Her flirty nature falls away, leaving behind obvious immaturity and shrill annoyance, like SAM is the one who's out of line here. "And a lighter, because it was kinda cool and I lost mine," Laura/Lana continues. "Oh, and this." She pulls away from the bar and digs into her purse, pulling out a small, round piece of tarnished metal. "I'd never seen anything with that design before. Thought maybe I'd make a necklace out of it, but if you want it back that bad – "

"Son of a bitch." The words fall from Sam's lips as he leans forward and recognizes the object in her palm.

" _Charms. They'll fend off possession. That demon's still out there. This'll stop it from getting back up in ya."_

Sam grabs the metal disc from her hand and pulls his matching charm from the depths of his own jacket pocket.

Lana/Laura wrinkles her nose. "Oh, God, you guys aren't, like, devil worshippers, are you?" She pauses to sip from her straw. "Because that is just so not hot."

Sam ignores her, pulling away from the bar and moving quickly back to the front of the bar. He crams the pair of anti-possession charms into his pocket, retrieves his cell phone and swiftly dials Bobby, a pit of dread growing in his gut.

It was the smallest of windows, but he figures the looming threat of an eternal sentence in Hell is more than enough vulnerability to provide the necessary chink in the armor for a demon to slip through. And to take a ride around in Dean Winchester? Well, they must just be lined up around the block.

* * *

 _One hour back_

" _S'he okay?"_

Like he's terrified to hear the answer, Bobby sounds old and fragile, two words that Sam has never before used to describe the man. His mentor and friend, someone who's been on this side of a possession, and a seasoned hunter who should know better than to ask such an asinine question.

 _How could he be OKAY, Bobby?_

Sam wants to scream it but doesn't, fingers tightening around the case of his cell phone as he stares across the room at Dean. He'd managed to pull his brother off of the floor and moved him with some effort to sit on the edge of one of the beds, where he's still planted stiffly, with that vacant stare and limbs bent at the sharp angles of a posable action figure. "He's pretty banged up. Defensive wounds, mostly, from whoever…I mean, from…" He pauses, not sure he wants to put words to the rest, Bobby sucks in a breath that says he doesn't need to, and he eagerly takes the out. "But he's here."

" _S'more than we could have asked for, Sam. I'd count ourselves damn lucky."_

 _Lucky? This is lucky_? Bobby should be here to see for himself just how _okay_ and _lucky_ they are. "Yeah," Sam chokes out, careful to keep his voice quiet on the off-chance Dean is hearing him.

" _I'm on my way."_

Like he can read Sam's damn mind. Bobby's surely been going mad, making calls and researching spells and rites from his house for days. The intention had always been to regroup when they found Dean, tag-team the exorcism and make sure they sent the son of a bitch good and packing, and Sam knows there's some underlying anger to be found in Bobby's concern. But this was, and is, his call, and that's just the way it's going to be. "I don't know if that's such a good idea, Bobby."

" _Sam."_

"You weren't here," Sam says, throat catching, fingers tense and digging into the edges of his phone to the point of pain. "You don't…"

" _Okay, son. Okay. Just tell me what you need."_

It's gotta be bad when someone like Bobby concedes so easily. Sam takes a moment to collect himself and reacts in kind, agreeing to drive the both of them straight to Sioux Falls as soon as he's managed enough sleep to not crash them into a tree while doing so.

It _is_ bad, and despite his cynicism Sam knows how lucky they actually have been. Twice, now, when all of their experience and knowledge says things should have gone the other way. So many times, _most_ times, possessions go the other way. It's not like the demon in question tends to care about its host's physical requirements of food, water, or rest, and if it goes on long enough, even when the thing finally grows bored and leaves, if it hasn't killed you during the process all that's left is a broken, traumatized shell of the person there was before.

When Sam had been possessed by Meg, when Bobby trusted his instinct and burned through the binding link, the shock of sudden pain and the lingering effects of what rite the hunter had been able to begin had done well to eject the skank demon pretty much immediately. Sam remembers a flush of heat, uncomfortable but not in any way excruciating, and his throat scoured dry and sore. Holes in his short-term memory, and smelling sulfur everywhere he went for days after. Stiff muscles, a hell of a headache, and an intense hunger and thirst like he'd been hollowed out or done one of those juice cleanses that were so trendy with Jess's friends.

Dean is stronger than him in a way Sam won't even open to debate, but this was different. This was a long, involved exorcism, expelling the demon little by little, and the son of a bitch knew it was coming the entire time Sam was spewing Latin, and he clung on hard just for the hell of it, tearing Dean apart from the inside out, out of rage and spite and _fun_.

Stiffly seated on the flat mattress, Dean isn't so much shaking anymore as he is staring at a point in the distance far beyond Sam or the walls of this room. There's blood in his hair, a line of it dried into a trail that snakes behind his ear, around the curve of his stubbled jaw and disappears under the collar of his torn shirt. Beneath the tear in the fabric over his shoulder is a shallow slash from a knife, swung defensively from whomever Dean – _no, the DEMON,_ Sam forcibly self-corrects _–_ had been attacking. A couple of swollen, scabbed-over knuckles on his right hand, and a blossoming patch of bruises high on his left cheekbone.

And for the shiner, Sam bears the matching bruises on his own knuckles. He worries the tender joints from across the room.

It's all evidence of exactly the type of possession this had been. The demon had been joy-riding in his brother, like a teenager stealing a ridiculously expensive exotic luxury car for the sole purpose of slamming it head-on into a brick wall. Plenty of damage done to the exterior, collateral damage from the desperate, venomous words spat Sam's way as he'd exorcised the piece of shit.

Sam approaches cautiously, putting himself in Dean's eye line but staying a safe distance away, and waits for his brother to look up at him before speaking. It takes a while for those green eyes to focus and shift to him, but when they do, Sam doesn't have to force his smile. "Hey. Wanna get cleaned up?"

Dean's eyebrows pull together in confusion, and his head dips slowly as he takes in the state of himself. He swallows, winces, and says only his fifth word to Sam in the hour since the black cloud dissipated over their heads. "Okay."

* * *

 _Three days gone_

"GPS in his phone was a bust," Sam tells Bobby as he stalks angrily away from the group of teenagers passing a bowl around outside an abandoned arcade in Lexington. His frustration and stress are becoming familiar companions in the form of a sharp, stabbing, persistent pain behind his eyes. It might also be dehydration. "He dumped it. Couple of kids found it yesterday morning."

" _Trail's not cold, Sam. Not yet."_

"How not?" Sam exclaims, slamming a fist against the roof of his boosted ride, a rusty Nova, sending a pair of pigeons startling away into the air. He's one more busted lead away from hacking into the FBI and putting out a nationwide APB on the damn Impala.

" _You need to take a break, son. Eat somethin' and sleep a couple hours. Let me makes some calls and see what I can come up with."_

Sam clenches his jaw and jerks open the car door. It complies silently, without the faintest hint of a _creak_ , and he just about loses any control he's still pretending to have right here on the street. "No," he grits into the phone.

" _Sam, you're no good to your brother like this."_

"No, Bobby." Sam drops roughly into the driver's seat. "We're not gonna lose…we're not stopping until we've got him back."

When Bobby speaks again, it's with a fair amount of fear and resignation.

" _A' course, Sam."_

* * *

 _Four hours back_

Without the cover of all that blood, Dean is remarkably pale, almost disgustingly so, with the exception of the reddish lines of healing cuts and the purpling skin around his eye, coming to spectacular color. The sharp angles of his shoulders and collar bone jut visibly beneath his clean t-shirt, and he holds himself like everything hurts. Sam's cleaned him up to the best of his abilities and bandaged what could still benefit from such care, and Dean had remained a concerning level of pliant and compliant throughout the entire process.

Sam finishes cramming the rest of Dean's demon-marked and gore-soiled clothing into a small, clear trash bag. It's going straight out back to the dumpster. Everything but the leather coat. That one he'll figure out later.

Sam's fingers come away coated in blood and stinking of sulfur, and he longs for a distraction. He knows better than to ask anymore stupid questions, like _how are you doing?_ Or, _do you want to talk about it?_ Those are things HE wants answered, things that would make HIMSELF feel better, and he needs to be thinking about Dean. "You want me to get you some food?"

Dean's head whips up, and it takes less time for his eyes to focus than the last time. It's progress. "No," he says, clearing his throat and shifting against the starchy sheets he's perched stiffly atop. He winces as any one of his injuries screams at him. "No, I want you to get me a _lot_ of food." His stomach audibly growls its agreement.

That's a lot of progress, and Sam smiles, a weight roughly the mass of an elephant seemingly lifted from his chest. He allows his shoulders to slump, his body to relax, for the first time in days. "You got it, man."

Dean stops him as he's pulling on his jacket and gathering the trashed clothing. "Hey, Sam?"

"Yeah?"

Dean frowns as his tongue cautiously probes the inside of his mouth. "Do I remember you breaking one of my teeth?"

* * *

 _Six days gone_

"I swear to God, Bobby, I'm gonna do it."

" _Sam, would you stop and listen to what the hell you're sayin'? What do you think that thing in your brother is gonna do if the police show up?"_

Sam's fingers tense over the keyboard of his laptop, and his eyes dart down to the cell lying on the tabletop next to the computer. Bobby's calm voice continues to float up through the speaker with the faintest static-y hint of a bad connection. It's for show, because he's known the man long enough to know he's feeling nearly the same amount of hysteria that Sam, himself is.

" _We need to get Dean back in one piece, Sam."_

Sam pulls his hands back from the keyboard, reaches instead for the glass of cheap whiskey beyond the phone. "Yeah."

" _Okay. Good. Now, I called you because I might have something."_

This the maybe the fifth _might have something_ he's heard this week, and Sam no longer has the restraint to not say so. "You always _might_ having something," he snaps, grimacing around the burn of bottom-shelf liquor down his throat. "I need you to _actually_ have something this time, Bobby."

" _You know, for all your fightin' it, you may as well have turned out exactly like John, boy."_

He deserves every bit and bite of that one. "I'm sorry, Bobby," Sam sighs, rubbing roughly at his eyes. "What do you have?"

" _Well, I ain't yet found a way to summon a demon when it's only been possessing someone a few days. They gotta really dig their heels in and take control for somethin' like that. I'm talkin' years. But I heard back from a hunter named Morris, haven't seen 'im in going on a decade but he says he's got some old form of location spell."_

"A location spell?" Sam asks incredulously, even as he paws through the pages scattered across the table, searching for an atlas or map.

" _If you've got something that belongs to the possessed, you can find 'em within roughly ten square miles. It's old, but it's Latin, so you should be able to manage it fine."_

"Ten square miles is still a hell of a lot of real estate, Bobby."

" _I'm sending it now. When you find Dean, you tell me where he is, and we're gonna blast this demon from him together. Sam? You hear me?"_

"Yeah," Sam lies in such obvious fashion, the man is an idiot if he doesn't know so. "You got it, Bobby."

* * *

 _Twenty-four hours back_

When Sam finds the information he's looking for, the location of the nearest parlor, he makes a note in his phone and then forcefully closes the lid of the laptop. He figures he won't be doing things lightly for the next long while. He folds his arms over the computer and sets his eyes on where Dean is sprawled across the room. "We're gonna go hang at Bobby's for a few days, okay?"

Sam asks, but it isn't really up to Dean, who has slept a decent amount and eaten roughly the equivalent of a wedding buffet spread, but still appears so uncharacteristically fragile Sam could probably throw him over his shoulder and toss his ass in the trunk to get him there, if need be. When Dean meets his eyes, Sam pops his eyebrows, hopefully communicating that thought.

He's caught Dean on the verge of drifting off again. He thinks on it a moment, then his head bobs loosely, in an unattached, sleepy way. "Yeah, okay, Sammy."

It's nice for some things to come so easily after such a hellish time, but it feels strange any time Dean isn't putting up a fight.

Sam nods and stands. "Okay. We've just gotta make a quick stop on the way."

* * *

 _Nine days gone_

Sam's given chase for three days across six states, always coming up just short.

But it turns out Sam didn't even need the spell, once the damn thing decided it _wanted_ to be found. One of the credit cards run at a motel outside of Tuscaloosa. A chime from his phone, and a confirmation email for the charges. He doesn't question it. He doesn't call Bobby, or Ellen, or anyone. He just goes.

The Impala looks like Christmas morning when he sees her parked shiny and whole in a spot in the lot, and Sam moves swiftly to the door of the coordinating room, exorcism dog-eared in the journal and packing only holy water as an offensive weapon. He kicks the door open into a dark room, and when a lamp flicks on he realizes in an instant what he DIDN'T prepare for.

He's immediately taken aback, appalled by what the demon has done to his brother, the utter mess it's made of the man Sam has looked up to his entire life.

He's seated at the table with the chain of the lamp still in hand, like he was waiting for Sam to arrive. He leans back in his chair and taps blood-stained fingertips on the wood with a grin that doesn't come close to anything resembling an organic expression of Dean's. "Hiya, Sammy."

Sam's fingers twitch in the direction of the holy water tucked in his pocket, desiring nothing more than HURTING this son of a bitch. "You let me find you. Why?"

"Well, to tell you the truth, this was only about HALF as fun as I thought it'd be." His head cocks, and the grin becomes a cruel chuckle. "Which, to be fair, was still pretty damn fun." Dean's hand raises to point to a smear of blood across his cheek as he rises. "This one, here? She was barely off the training wheels when we found her."

Sam doesn't hesitate, steps forward and pulls his fist back and slams it into the side of Dean's head. He stumbles backwards and gazes up at Sam, spitting a mouthful of blood and possibly a chipped piece of tooth to the floor.

It only serves to encourage the demon. "Of course, I'm just the set-up man here, Sam. The real fun comes after, right? What do you think is gonna be left of your brother when you exorcise me, huh?" Dean's eyes narrow into dark, unforgiving pinpoints that stab Sam in the meat of his heart. "You think about that yet?"

"Is that what this was about?" Sam grits, such tension and fury building inside of him that his hands begin to tremble at his sides.

"This?" Dean's arms make a sweeping gesture down at the blood-covered package that is Sam's big brother. "This was just my lucky day, Sammy. It's not every day you happen upon an unprotected Winchester."

Sam swallows back bile and pulls out the holy water. "Well, I'd say your luck's just about run out."

"You got any idea how many people he's killed? And not with weapons." He holds Dean's hands up, putting those crimson-stained fingers back on full display.

Sam's stomach twists and he rips open the flask, throwing a stream of holy water into Dean's face. The demon hisses in pain and wrenches away as steam pours from shallow cuts and exposed skin.

Blood and water drip slowly to the floor between them, and Dean's eyes flash black. "Just these hands, Sam. And my expert opinion?" Dean's head shakes slowly. "Wasn't the first time, either."

"Shut up. You're not going to convince me that _anything_ you did over the past nine days was really my brother. You're not going to convince _him_."

The pause before the demon chooses to speak again is unnerving.

"We'll see."

"You have one more chance to do this the easy way," Sam threatens, even as he withdraws the journal, opens the book to the most effective exorcism John Winchester ever came across. Still willing to give the demon an easy out, because he has all of that knowledge tugging at the back of his mind, that it would be so much easier on both of them if the damn thing would leave his brother voluntarily.

Instead, he shrugs Dean's shoulders. "Okay, then. Gimme what you got, Winchester."

* * *

 _Thirty hours back_

"Matching tattoos, Sammy?" Dean complains, his voice rising in pitch until he's actually on the verge of whining, but sounding finally, wonderfully, completely like himself. He squirms on the passenger side of the bench. "This isn't exactly the kind of brotherly bonding I ever wanted to do. Can't we just go fishing or cow tipping or something?"

"Shut up," Sam says seriously, twisting on the seat to jab a finger towards the charm around Dean's neck. Some knot of tension in his lower back pops as he does so. "We're making these things more permanent, because you are _never_ …" He pauses for a breath, tries to release some of the horror of the past week from his tone. "We're never doing that again. Got it?"

"Yeah, got it." Dean tugs at the cuffs of his jacket sleeves. He's been rather vocal about all of his clothes feeling odd with the bit of weight he's lost. In fact, that's about the only thing he's been vocal about.

Sam takes the key from the ignition but doesn't yet move to open the car door. Dean follows his lead, sitting silently and waiting for Sam to say what he's going to.

"Listen, man. I'm not…I'm not gonna pry, and you never have to say anything you don't want to." Sam grips the steering wheel and keeps his eyes trained on the wide windows of the strip mall outside the windshield. "I just want you to know that I'm here, for whatever you need, for…however long we've got. Okay?" He lets his eyes slide to the side, to make sure Dean is listening, to make sure he's even still in the car.

Dean stares a long while before he finally nods. "Yeah, Sammy." His voice cracks and he swallows, clears his throat. "Thanks." He exhales and shakes his head, a welcome smile bringing some light back to his features as he slaps Sam's knee. "All right. Let's go get our tramp stamps."

* * *

 _End_


End file.
